First ever
Approved CMM claim in the company's history
$405K
Secured across 8 claims, with more in motion
$0 before
Claimed before Carve, despite being eligible
The situation
Earned, eligible, and impossible to actually claim.
Not a single CMM claim had ever been approved. No claims entered into Partner Center, no process in place to identify or submit claims. Their teams ran POCs and migrations for customers for free as standard practice, so attaching Microsoft funding to that work meant a culture change, not just a process one. Every prior internal attempt had died in legal, finance, and professional-services sign-off.
The engagement
March to June 2026
Mar 2026
Engaged. Discovery interviews and end-to-end strategy design.
Apr 2026
Claim workflow built. Legal, finance, and PS sign-off cleared.
Late Apr
First claim submitted through the new program.
Jun 2026
First-ever approval. Claim automation live.
Now
Repeatable engine running and scaling.
What Carve did
We built the whole program from scratch as a Managed Service.
- Built the program from scratch. We designed the full claim workflow across pre- and post-sales, defined the use cases and a decision tree for the right claim type, and completed Partner Center setup.
- Cleared the blockers that killed prior attempts. We secured leadership buy-in, then drove sign-off across the teams that had stalled CMM before: professional services, legal, and finance, including how Microsoft funds route internally.
- Made it repeatable and seller-ready. We built automated compliance comms, propensity-based account targeting, and seller enablement so the alliances team could pitch CMM as a value-add, not a compliance task, then managed proof-of-execution through to Microsoft approval.
The outcome
A first-ever claim, $405K cleared, and a repeatable engine.
1st
Approved claim ever, from zero
$405K
Confirmed funding, more in motion
8
Claims cleared and approved
The client landed its first-ever Microsoft-approved CMM claim, never reached before in the company's history. Eight claims have now cleared, totaling $405K in confirmed funding with more in motion, money they can now put behind their customer accounts.
The program is now a repeatable engine. Claim automation is live, it is folded into monthly Microsoft business reviews, and the internal owner is expanding it into the core sales force. Starting with post-sales claims preserved headroom to unlock pre-sales claims as the program continues to scale.
